Barney Frank, Pot-Law Buster

Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) may be leaving Congress at the end of this term, but he’s not giving up his push to legalize pot.

Frank is so passionate about legalization that he admits he shares ground with Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas).

“Ron and I are in great agreement on this. We’re in great agreement on not banning gambling,” Frank said yesterday on CNN. “He and I — we differ on the economic situation, because I think economics inevitably involves other people.”

The congressman said he doesn’t smoke pot, though.

“I smoke a cigar or two a day. I did have a brownie once and it made me sleepy. But, you know, I don’t gamble either,” he said.

Frank said he’s motivated by personal freedom, but wants to “free up government resources to do things that that I think are important in improving the quality of life without having to raise taxes.”

“At the federal level, that means cutting military spending. At the state level, it means not spending as much as we do on prisons,” he said. “…One of the best things we can do to reduce state expenditures is to stop going after people who use marijuana.”

Frank used the analogy of Prohibition. “Instead of being a drain our resources, we could tax it, like everything else and it would be a contribution,” he said.

“If you look at the arrests for marijuana: Disproportionately, they come from people in minority groups and there are a lot of highly educated and upper income white kids who smoke it. They’re much less likely to get arrested,” he said. “…So, it adds a degree of social disorganization and cost and it’s an impingement on personal freedom.”

Bridget Johnson is a veteran journalist whose news articles and opinion columns have run in dozens of news outlets across the globe. Bridget first came to Washington to be online editor at The Hill, where she wrote The World from The Hill column on foreign policy. Previously she was an opinion writer and editorial board member at the Rocky Mountain News and nation/world news columnist at the Los Angeles Daily News.
She is an NPR contributor and has contributed to USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, National Review Online, Politico and more, and has myriad television and radio credits as a commentator. Bridget is Washington Editor for PJ Media.

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I agree with Frank on the pot – I don’t smoke it either, but enforcement isn’t worth it. Just like Prohibition in the 20′s, it doesn’t prevent anything it just criminalizes an activity that doesn’t hurt anyone except the user, and creates criminal great and small.

I know people here in MA-4 who have been calling Frank a “genius”, “intellecual”, “brains of the house” or similar for years. Now that he is headed out the door the same people are calling him a narcissistic blowhard, hair-triggered, offensive bully. Where have these people been for the past 25 years!? Of course, they are all about to vote in a neophyte, zero-accomplishment pretty-face-with-lots-of-space in Joe Kennedy. That his daddy is a shill-man for Hugo Chavez doesn’t seem to bother anyone (perhaps that is considered a feature instead of a bug).